The One Ring (SLASH'EM)
| = The One Ring (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| Base item | ring of invisibility |
| Affiliation | |
| When carried | |
| When worn | |
| When invoked | |
| Base price | 50000 zm |
| Weight | 3 |
| Material | randomized appearance |
- For the artifact in EvilHack, see The One Ring (EvilHack).
The One Ring is a quest artifact that appears in SLASH, an ancestor of SLASH'EM, and is also present as a deferred object in SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM. The One Ring serves as the prize for completing the Hobbit quest, and its default alignment is lawful. Its base item is a ring of invisibility.
In vanilla NetHack, hobbits that are undamaged and not hostile will ask about the One Ring when chatting to them.
Description
While carried, The One Ring grants drain resistance, half spell damage and warning. Invoking The One Ring toggles conflict.
Origin
The One Ring, also called the Ruling Ring or Isildur's Bane, is a central plot element in the wikipedia:Middle-Earth stories of J.R.R. Tolkien. It first appeared in the 1937 story The Hobbit as a magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility: Tolkien changed it into a malevolent Ring of Power and rewrote parts of The Hobbit to fit in with the expanded narrative. The 1954 story The Lord of the Rings describes the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the Ring and save Middle-earth.
The Ring was first introduced to Tolkien's works as a plot device rather than a central narrative theme. As told in The Hobbit, Bilbo found the Ring while lost in the tunnels near Gollum's lair; in the first edition, Gollum offers to surrender the Ring to Bilbo as a reward for winning the Riddle Game. When Tolkien was later writing The Lord of the Rings, he realized that the Ring's grip on Gollum would never permit him to give it up willingly, and therefore revised The Hobbit: in the second edition, after losing the Riddle Game to Bilbo, Gollum went to get his "Precious" to help him kill and eat Bilbo, but found the Ring missing. From Bilbo's last question—"What have I got in my pocket?"—Gollum guessed correctly that Bilbo had found the Ring.
Gollum sought Bilbo through the caves, not realizing that Bilbo had discovered the Ring's power of invisibility and was following him to the cave's mouth. Bilbo escaped Gollum and the goblins by remaining invisible, but he chose not to tell Gandalf and the dwarves that the Ring had made him invisible. Instead, he told them a story that followed the first edition: that Gollum had given him the Ring and shown him the way out. Gandalf was immediately suspicious of the Ring, and later forced the real story from Bilbo before persuading him to give up the ring—Bilbo obliged, becoming the first Ring-bearer to ever surrender one willingly. Meanwhile, Gollum eventually left the Misty Mountains to track down the Ring and was drawn to Mordor, where he was captured and partly set in motion the events that would lead to both his and the Ring's destruction.
Encyclopedia entry
- See the encyclopedia entry for ring.
